Frammenti non dimenticati

Firenze, 1966

On 4 November 1966 the Arno, the river that runs through Florence, burst its banks and flooded the city. Sixty years later, Officina Profumo-Farmaceutica di Santa Maria Novella remembers the flood with an exhibition at its home in Via della Scala 16 and by supporting the restoration of Francesco Botticini’s Saint Sebastian, a work belonging to the Uffizi Galleries that the water severely damaged.

The exhibition “Frammenti non dimenticati. Firenze, 1966” is open to the public from 16 October to 22 November 2026. It presents Saint Sebastian before its restoration, alongside photographs and documents of the flood and objects from the Officina’s Archive and collections.

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Florence, 4 November 1966

On 4 November 1966, after days of heavy rain, the Arno burst its banks and flooded the city. By morning the flood had reached the city centre and spread through the districts on both banks, rising above four metres (13 ft) in places. Fuel oil, used at the time for heating, spilled from damaged systems and mixed with the water, making the damage worse. When the river receded on 6 November, it left about 600,000 tonnes (660,000 US tons) of mud.

Thousands of works of art and more than a million books were damaged. It remains one of the deepest wounds in Florence’s history.

Young volunteers came from across Italy and around the world. They dug out the mud and carried books and works of art to safety. Florence still remembers them as the Mud Angels.

The flood at Via della Scala

Via della Scala 16 is the home of Officina Profumo-Farmaceutica di Santa Maria Novella, in Florence since 1221. In 1966 the complex also housed production, with its laboratories and storerooms, alongside the Archive and the historic rooms open to the public.

When the Arno overflowed, the flood reached the site too. Floors, plaster and decoration were compromised, and raw materials, tools and containers were covered in a thick, oily layer.

Much of the Officina’s memory was damaged as well: the historic archive and the library, along with photographic plates, printing matrices and labels. What remains still bears the marks of those days, or has since been restored. Some of it is now on view in the exhibition.

Saint Sebastian and the exhibition

Francesco Botticini’s Saint Sebastian is a panel painting dated between 1475 and 1480 and belonging to the Uffizi Galleries. In November 1966 it was in a restoration laboratory on the ground floor of the Uffizi, where the water and mud reached it.

The damage was severe: the paint broke apart and the wood shrank. To save it, in 1967 restorers chose to detach the paint from the original panel and transfer it to a new support. The saint’s face was pieced back together from the recovered fragments. Today the work is kept at the Opificio delle Pietre Dure, Florence’s institute for restoration.

Sixty years after the flood, the Officina is supporting the restoration of Saint Sebastian, which will be carried out at the Opificio. The intervention cannot undo the changes the painting has undergone. The decision recognises the work’s beauty and value in the form history has left it. Once complete, Saint Sebastian will return to the Uffizi.

Before its restoration, the painting is on view at Via della Scala 16 in the exhibition Frammenti non dimenticati. Firenze, 1966, alongside photographs of the flood and documents and objects from the Officina’s Archive, spanning the eighteenth century to the 1960s. Some still show traces of the mud, while others have been restored.